AOL Strikes Wrong Chord With 'Gay Music'

Does music have a sexual orientation?
Apparently AOL thinks so.
Call up its massively popular AOLmusic.com site, scroll through its "musical styles" choices, and right below "soundtracks" and just above "classic rock" you'll find a heretofore undiscovered genre known as "gay and lesbian" music.
And Sony/BMG has just proudly trumpeted a new label meant to tout lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered artists called Twist. Its first releases arrive this June.
The label comes complete with a radio show, which just began spinning "gay music" in New York on WPLJ-FM.
On the surface, this all reads as terribly liberated, as if the conglomerates were saying: "Look how gay-friendly we are! We're promoting you guys to the hilt."
Unfortunately for, say, Twist, most gay musicians would sooner be shoved into the "spoken word" category than be ghettoized by their sexuality. It's not that many don't want to be known for who they are. It's that they make music for the same audience any artist does: as large and lucrative a one as possible.
By labeling their music "gay," it sends a message to straight people that they can't possibly relate to what they're singing about.
In the case of AOLmusic, the "gay and lesbian" music section makes assumptions about taste that necessarily stumble into stereotype. Take a look at what AOL considered "gay music" in its debut week: a show tune (from "Rent"), a song from a fashion-oriented sexpot (Gwen Stefani) and a dance cut from - guess who? - Madonna.
Why not throw in something from Judy Garland?
The only two acts included in the pop top 10 of late that have openly gay members are the one-named singer Antony and the Scissor Sisters, who, at least in England, have enough presumably straight fans to have hit No. 1 on the charts several times.
Of course, AOL didn't become a major corporation by being dumb. Stereotypes have some basis in truth. If you go to a Pet Shop Boys concert in New York, it's a safe bet a hefty percentage of those attending have been to a bar named Splash. And, of course, we've all gone to Broadway musicals and noticed the line at the men's room is significantly longer than the one at the women's.
But AOL's labeling of music as "gay and lesbian" is hardly the benign equivalent to those like-named sections that appear in travel books, city magazines or Internet guides like Craigslist. Those outlets provide crucial information for LGBT people about health, safety and the most likely place to find sex at 3 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon.
What's irritating about the growing "gay" demarcation for music isn't only that it's nonsensical. It's that it purports to be cutting edge while hinging on something as old as the proverbial hills: targeting a market.
from The Hub